Family and Friends

Recently we visited friends who are like family to us. Earl & Jane Martin inspired the start of CBF's work with Romany in Europe back, nearly 30 years ago.

Once the Romany Team started, they served as Prayer Coordinators for many years. It was a delight to get to know Earl and Jane better. They had a wealth of experience to share from their time serving in East Africa and then with the International Baptist Theological Seminary's extension work in Central and Eastern Europe.

It was a blessing to spend time with them again. And it was also a blessing for them to receive this watercolor painting donated by another friend, Arie Pothoven, from the church we attend in the Netherlands. Thank you for enriching our lives!
 

Along the Way

Keith and I have been roaming around America from Louisiana to Iowa since early September. Several things have struck us, especially after living in Europe for so many years.

Water. American restaurants give customers huge glasses of water—totally free.
These glasses are also refilled—totally free. Drinking fountains are available all over the place, even in out-of-the-way state parks, also totally free. Water from the tap is safe to drink virtually everywhere. If you are thirsty, come and drink water! Isaiah 55:1

Noise. Air conditioners, leaf blowers, lawn mowers, traffic . . . America can be a noisy place. In Western Europe, sound barriers that along major high ways and freeways in cities and by  residential areas are standard parts of road construction. He leads me beside still waters. Ps 23: 2.

Wildlife. Squirrels scampering across lawns. Deer slipping through wooded backyards. Scarlet cardinals and blue, blue jays flying jauntily from bush to tree. I did not know I missed their calls until I heard them again.

What have you seen along your way?

(Photo taken along Otter Creek, Spring Valley community, Illinois, where I grew up.)

 

AUTHORITIES ORDERED TO PROVIDE WATER FOR ROMANI COMMUNITIES IN PRILEP, NORTH MACEDONIA Brussels, Skopje 25 August 2022: Authorities in the Municipality of Prilep have been ordered to provide access to clean water for the Romani neighbourhoods of "Debarca" and "Tri Bagremi" in Prilep, North Macedonia. On 23rd August 2022, the Commission for Prevention and Protection against Discrimination communicated a decision which found that the Municipality of Prilep and PUC Water and Sewerage Prilep had directly discriminated against Roma in the city by not ensuring equal access to water. The finding came after a complaint by the European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) on behalf of Romani people from these communities. The public institutions have six months to implement the decision. “It is not an accident that Roma remain unconnected to the public water supply, often for decades” said ERRC President Đorđe Jovanović. “Institutional racism means these communities get neglected and denied basic infrastructure by public authorities. Water is so essential, without it these Roma cannot fully enjoy equal access to education, to good health and hygiene, to employment as well as to all kinds of other areas of life which are affected by a lack of clean water in the home.” Despite living there for many years, the Romani communities in the “Debarca” and “Tri Bagremi” neighbourhoods have never been connected to mains-supplied running water. Part of the reason is that many of the homes in these neighbourhoods have never been legalised by the municipality. The Commission’s decision mentions this issue and states that if there are legal obstacles regarding the legalisation of the neighbourhood, then the authorities must provide temporary solutions that will provide access to clean water for all Romani families living in the area. The decision issued by the Commission found direct discrimination on the basis of race, skin colour, ethnicity, social origin and property status in the area of access to goods and services. The ERRC also have a case currently pending before the National Court in Prilep concerning this issue. This press release is also available in Macedonian. For more information, or to arrange an interview contact: Jonathan Lee (in English)  Advocacy & Communications Director European Roma Rights Centre jonathan.lee@errc.org  +32 492 88 7679 Senada Sali (in Macedonian) Legal Director  European Roma Rights Centre senada.sali@errc.org  +389 74 240 274 © ERRC 2022. All rights reserved.

Jesus Speaks My Language

The Jesus films Keith helped dub into Flemish are ready for their final review. Praise God! 

Flemish is the version of Dutch spoken in Belgium. They dubbed three films:  the Jesus video based on Luke's Gospel, a shorter children's version, and the Magdalena Project, a shorter version narrated by Mary Magdalene. 

The first Jesus film Keith worked on was in Sinti Romani. During the final review, Keith noticed that one of the Sinti voice actors had tears streaming down his face. Keith asked if the film was that bad. No, the man replied, I've been a Christian for years. I heard that God speaks all languages, but now, somehow, I know it. Jesus speaks my language. I will pray now in the language my mother used, and God will understand.

Why make the Jesus film in Flemish? Because Flemish mothers do not speak Standard Dutch, Flemish people do not think or dream in Standard Dutch. God speaks to each of us in the language of our hearts. 

What is your heart language?

This past weekend Erika and I visited friends of ours from Moldova. 

My friend Erika has gone to Moldova numerous times and offered to drive the 2 1/2 hours from Arnhem to our Moldovan friends' current home in North Holland. (Erika, far right)

They have come to North Holland to work in the greenhouses that grow tomatoes. 

In high season, they work 10 hours/day, but usually the work day starts at 7 AM and only includes 8 hours of work. 

They made time, on their day off, to prepare a festive meal for us.

Our friend Marlute graciously agreed to join us. She and her infant child are staying in the same area. Marlute translated from Romanian or Ursari Romani into English or Dutch.

Grateful for brothers and sisters in Christ . . . who are also friends!

Mary

This past Sunday I visited a friend's church. A group there were getting ready to pass out tracts on the streets of their city and invite people to a Christian film later the same day. 

I will probably never do street evangelism. But I am glad someone does. I know people who have become believers through encounters like this.

This particular set of brothers and sisters are probably never going to join an open-air activity focusing on racial justice (it's not perceived as an issue in their country). I'm not likely to organize that, either, but I'm glad somebody does. 

I'm sure you can think of other examples. Churches who organize hour-long praise and worship sessions. Churches who practice and teach time-tested spiritual disciplines. There are many gifts in the body of Christ. Individual gifts and group gifts. Thank God for giving us each other!

Ninety Children

These are some of the 80-90 children who are in one of the Moldovan refugee centers set aside for Ukrainian refugees who happen to be Romany. 

These are supplies our Moldovan partners brought for the children and their parents. There are about 200 adults at this center.

This is the Moldovan lawyer who is already helping the Romany refugees from Ukraine. She is a Christian and also Romany. Our partners plan to partner with her further. 

Many of the refugees at this center do not have legal identity papers. They may have relatives and family in other countries they could go to, but without the proper papers they cannot travel further. The officials who would grant those papers see these refugees as Romany, not as Ukrainian citizens, even though these people have also been born and raised in Ukraine.

Pray with us for this work, for these children, and for the adults who accompany them.

A Very Special Easter

How did you celebrate Easter? Keith and I celebrated in a hotel on the Catalonian coast of Spain. No, we were not on vacation. We were at the first face-to-face CBF Europe Team gathering since COVID struck. Part of our time overlapped with CBF's Africa/Middle East Team. We were blessed to have them organize Easter Sunday worship.

Testimonies came from members of both teams. Jeff Lee sent us all this image of the risen Christ. Paintings like this often appears in the Orthodox churches of N. Macedonia, where he and his wife Alicia serve. 

Musicians from both teams led music. (Note: some of the members of the Africa/Middle East Team cannot have their names or images published.)

Paul Baxley, executive coordinator of CBF and a gifted speaker, shared how Easter happened While it was still dark. We had talked about darkness in our team gatherings in the days before Easter.  Some of us work directly with refugees, now mostly from Ukraine but also from places like Syria. Some of grew up in places like Columbia, where (to reference another famous sermon) Sunday never comes; it's always Friday. 

Dr. Baxley reminded us that "Jesus comes to His people while it is still dark." Jeff's picture shows Jesus rescuing people from hell. It doesn't get much darker than that.  

Then we broke bread together.

And after we shared the bread and the wine/grape juice, we broke bread together again at a traditional Catalonian restaurant.  

We pray your Easter was as blessed as ours!

Women's Voices--Resurrection!

This Sunday our sisters and brothers in Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and other places who follow the Julian calendar will be celebrating Easter. One year, when I visited Moldova in April, I got to celebrate Easter twice!

My friends in Romania tell me that every year a film about Jesus comes on TV at this time. This year it will be Magdalena, the story of Jesus told by Mary Magdalene to a group of women. 

That is very encouraging to us. Here you see Keith at the Operation Mobilisation Center outside of Brussels recording the voice of Magdalena for the Flemish version of this film. The smiling lady is Magdalena. The thoughtful-looking man also speaks Flemish as his first language and is "proof-listening." 

Keith was part of a team that recorded the voices for Magdalena, the Story of Jesus for Children, and the Jesus film all in Flemish, all in 2 weeks' time. Flemish and the Dutch Keith and I learned are different dialects of the same language. As we were recording, we discovered how different!

These films all exist in the standard Dutch of the Netherlands. But at the review, one of the Flemish-speakers said, "This is the first time I've heard a Christian film in Flemish. I was surprised by how much it really touched me."

Perhaps you would like to watch one of these films in your own language, too? https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch.html

The Rest of the Story . . .

 So last week Pastor Petru Ciochina in Moldova helped "Olga", her teenaged brother, and her five small children get a train ticket towards Munich, where she hoped to join other family members who had fled Ukraine (Petru pictured here with the family).

They got as far as Budapest, Hungary, and ran into
difficulties. Olga called Petru. Petru called Zoltan, an ethnic Hungarian who works with Romany in Romania. They know each other because Zoltan has often gone with me to help with volunteer teams in the church Petru pastors. I know Zoltan because he is part of a Wycliffe/SIL group working in Romani languages.

Petru, far left; Zoltan center,
visiting Romany in Moldova

Zoltan, a missionary with Wycliffe Romania, contacted Wycliffe Hungary. They gave him the phone number of a doctor in Budapest. She gave Zoltan the number of a free hotline for Ukrainian refugees. The hotline is in Ukrainian, Hungarian, and English. Anyone calling it can receive assistance. 

Petru told Olga. He also passed the number on to any other refugees who might be traveling through Hungary. Olga and her family were helped.

This is how the body of Christ works. Because people like you support missions like CBF, I am here. I connected Zoltan and Petru. Petru is in Moldova. I am not. You are not. He could help Olga, partly with funds that Christians like you gave in America and I, in the Netherlands, sent on to Petru. Someone none of us know in Budapest could help Zoltan. Zoltan could help Petru help Olga. Thank you for being part of the body of Christ. Together we do great good, sometimes in small ways that make a huge difference!

UKRAINIAN RELIEF At Work

Pastor Petru Ciochina wrote:  

Because I like to be with people and communicate with them, I focused my activity on refugees from the center in Nisporeni, Moldova, who are without money and with many children. I buy them medicine and some baby food. Among them I met a woman named Olga* who moved me to tears. With a good and patient heart, who ran away from the war with 5 children, all of her own. She told me about the hardships she went through before arriving in Moldova. 

Olga is 25 years old, her husband left her before the war started. When the war began, they fled to the shelters. Every time the sirens sounded, she couldn't dress all five of her children quickly, and she was the last to reach the bomb shelter. And because of this her father forced her to go to Moldova with her brother David. Later she asked me to help her go to Romania so that she could reach a relative of hers who took refuge from war in Germany.  Olga had no money. I bought them train tickets. I gave them some pocket money. She said that when she came back, she would give me back everything I had spent for her and her children. That moved me, and I said no. I told her I was doing this because I had Jesus in my heart. And He brought me to you, and He loves children. And He teaches me „And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” 

We hugged her and we said goodbye as if she were a child of mine. Now I don't know anything about her, I prayed with the whole church to be on God's guard. She was to arrive in Munich.

*Name changed to protect privacy.

Update from Partners in Moldova Ministering to Refugees from Ukraine

 From Pastor Petru Ciochina in Moldova:

 Forty-four Roma were accommodated in the church building in Nisporeni, but they went to another
destination (Germany). Yesterday I visited the center in Nisporeni organized by the local authorities. There are 80 refugees, but they didn't have cups for them, plates. I took something for them. There are 40 children. I talked to a refugee teacher. She said she wanted to do activities with the children. I brought notebooks and crayons. I found out that there are two Roma women with children. Now I want to visit them to see their needs. Tomorrow I plan to go to the south of Moldova on the border with Ukraine, there are many refugees. We'll give them hot food and tea. There are many waiting for accommodation, it is cold and humid. I think I'm going to take cold medicine.

Thank you for your support. There is no one in the church building now. We are waiting for other refugees tonight or tomorrow. We are on the list of churches that receive refugees. We are waiting. Today I went to the Roma family. I didn't know there were so many children. 6 small children. I made a to-do list. I'll go shopping tomorrow. They have nothing.

If you wish to donate for this, please do so through CBF’s Ukrainian Relief Fund. We anticipate sending $4,000 from that fund to this work in Moldova.From Pastor Petru Ciochina:

 

A friend from Romania writes: 

(E)veryone here has mobilized to help, there are fund raisings, we collect food, blankets, socks, toys,

Romania in green; Ukraine in yellow

hygiene products, we make lists with accommodation possibilities etc. There are people we know going back and forth with supply and Ukraine people. I hope and pray the human trafficking will not grow... because there are mostly mothers and children coming from Ukraine. 

But I see an incredible solidarity that makes me proud of my people. 

I pray for peace.

Because a Little Girl Refused to Lie

Courtesy of this news article 

This Bible was translated into the language that Sinti Romany speak and published by Romanes Arbeit Marburg because a little girl refused to lie. 

A German deaconess* named Sister Luise started to meet regularly with Sinti children who lived near her. This came to an abrupt end when one of these children was asked to lie for a relative. The little girl refused. She had learned from Sister Luise that lying does not please God.

The relative was not happy. He looked for a way to stop Sister Luise's influence, and he found one. Among the Sinti, contact with blood makes one ritually unclean. Unclean people are banned from Sinti society. Hospital workers, including doctors and nurses,  are per definition unclean.  Sister Luise did not work in a hospital. But she had substituted at the reception desk for a fellow deaconess who did. This was enough to have her declared unclean. She could no longer visit the children or have direct social contact with them.

Sister Luise prayed and thought. She decided to start sending cards with Bible verses in them to the people she couldn't visit. She discovered that someone had started translating bits of Scripture into Sinti. She started pasting those bits into her colorful cards. 

One thing led to another. Sister Luise became a founding member of Romanes Arbeit Marburg (Romany Work Marburg or RAM for short). First RAM published finished books of the Bible--Mark, John, Genesis. Then they published the entire New Testament. And last summer, they published the whole Bible. 

Sister Luise is no longer with us. But the Bible she helped bring into being will be blessing to many Sinti children now and in generations to come. 

*This sort of deaconess is kind of like a Protestant nun, traditionally serving in health care, social work, and/or mission.

Sightings

Ever regretted something you did? Ever have God bless you anyway? That's what happened with me and the merels (Dutch name for blackbird pictured here).

Merels are the size and shape of an American robin. For several years, a pair nested in the roses in front of our house. They would raise at least two broods per year. But roses need to be trimmed every now and then to keep blooming well. And yes, I trimmed away the part where the merels nested.

In the backyard we have winter jasmine, a lovely yellow flower that brightens up the drab winter days. Quite a bit of it grew up the side of the house--enough for a pair of merels to nest there for several years. But then that mood-boosting yellow flower wasn't blooming so well. So--yes--I got the bright idea of trimming it. No more merels nesting in the back yard.

Back to the front yard. The neighbor had an evergreen hedge that shaded our handkerchief front yard and blocked our view. That hedge really bugged me. So when the neighbor gave me permission to do some trimming . . .. It was only AFTER I'd snipped away more than she liked that she told me, unhappily, that merels had nested for several years on her side of the hedge. And, yes, I had once again trimmed that part away.

I really felt badly about all of this, especially when some plague killed off a lot of merels around here. I confessed this to the Lord, but it still weighed on my heart. 

And then I started catching glimpses of merels. Sitting on the neighbor's fence. Flitting from tree to tree in the neighborhood park. Snacking on wild fruit in the yard. Just this morning I saw two. And I thanked our Creator for the sightings. This reassures me that He is looking after merels . . . and me. 

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. Jesus to his disciples, Matthew 10:29-31, English Standard Version